Analytics Bounce Rate - Friend or Foe?
If you’re not familiar with Google Analytics, you’re probably not aware of what the Bounce Rate is, so let me explain it. The bounce rate is the number of visitors who leave a website on the same page that they entered, without clicking onto any other page.
There are many cases you might think the bounce rate is bad. You might ask yourself if your website is engaging enough, or does it make it easy enough to find the content the user is looking for. It should almost definitely strike bells with the question “Is my SEO working?”
Bounce rate can be good and bad...
The truth is, bounce rate can be both good and bad, but you have to do some investigation to find out which applies for your website.
For example:
- A high bounce rate could mean that your site has lots of useful information that is very easy to find and is highly visible in the SERPs. It could also mean your site is horrible on the eye and looks spammy causing the visitors to look elsewhere when they see it.
- A low bounce rate could mean that your site is engaging and includes other interesting articles for your visitors. It could also mean the user can’t find what they’re looking for.
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It’s very hard to tell which of the above applies to your website, so you mainly have to use common sense. Ask yourself a few questions such as:
- Does my site look spammy? Do I have lots of unnecessary links?
- Is the site mess? Can you say “yes” to “can you find something if this was your first time on the site?”
- Are the metas optimised for the content on this page?
- Is the page well linked to?
- Is the page at a shallow link depth (E.G. www.yoursite.com/page rather than www.yoursite.com/category/sub-category/article)?
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By answering those questions you can quite easily determine if your bounce rate is good or bad. You may also look into adding a “Was this article useful?” poll to each page to allow your visitors to tell you if they found it useful.
Asking your visitors is by far the best way of determining if your site is user friendly, so utilise that as much as possible without becoming too intruding.
It’s worth familiarising yourself with other Analytics features as well. It’s one of the most powerful tools you can use with your website, and it’s free so don’t waste all of that information!
